The Rise and Fall of Gabriel Gray
by Ame no Chikara
Summary: Gabriel knew that the ticking in the back of his head was no gift from God. Part of him screamed for the ticking to stop, but he knew he needed it. He needed to hear the constant drum of the clock to survive. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: Heroes is not mine and never will be, sadly enough

The Rise and Fall of Gabriel Gray

by Ame no Chikara

Gabriel Gray understood how clocks worked. He knew how all the pieces fit, how everything clicked together perfectly, and exactly how long a second took. To Gabriel, everything in the world came down to black and white. Either a timepiece was broken or it was fixed, a person was either good or bad, and you were either special or not. It could have been said that he was a pessimist, but he just knew that there was only one solution to the problem.

When he was in school, a teacher had once said that the universe operated on a never-ending math equation. She had claimed that the universe was unless, time infinite, and matter constantly fluctuating. She would go on for days about how time was the one thing that was constant and always moving forward. Everything else was malleable and corruptible, but not the constant ticking of the clock. Science ruled the world and the universe was written with numbers, programmed like a computer. Every idea that she presented was new and revolutionary to Gabriel. He had never heard such beautiful blasphemy. Indulgence in the knowledge that the class provided was his guilty pleasure and he knew that indulgence was a sin.

She, like clockwork, always started her class at 12:03:01 p.m. and always ended at 12:42:05 p.m.. Even she began to break. Throughout the yeah, class periods began to get longer by fractions of seconds, until eventually the period expanded to 66.6 seconds too long.

His mother had always told him that the number was to never be trusted. Every night, she filled his head with nightmares of the horror and pain of hell before kissing his head and assuring him that he would rise above- he was special. He was meant to be something more than what she was, but she told him she was already saved. Every night as she would wrap her arms around Gabriel, she would tell him how glorious heaven would be for the both of him if he stayed clean, perfect, sterile, ticking in perfect rhythm with the clock.

Gabriel had wanted nothing more than to help the woman that told him that everything swung in the rhythm of time. He wanted to tell her that she was broken and he could help her. The time was right, but she had never had the time for him. When his mother had told him that his teacher had died from a brain tumor. Gabriel knew it was true. Satan had come just like his mother claimed he would and took a woman who dared to talk about numbers as the king of the universe. He would cry himself to sleep every night after his mother left the room because no matter he tried to shake his thought, he couldn't help but still believe everything that the woman had said.

That was the first time that Gabriel realized that he was going to hell and would never be special.

He had tried so hard to force himself to not think about numbers, not think about the nature of time, and not think about the way the way people bowed in life more to the ticking of the clock instead of the glory and power of his God. Still, when he would shut his eyes, the only thing he could hear was the constant snapping of the seconds flipping by.

He had once happened by a college lecture and it had perked his interest. The professor looked like anybody but a doctor. He looked more like a greying, beanpole of a hippie in a ball cap and a dark jacket and he talked like he was having a casual conversation over a few beers with his buddies. So many of the words that the man had thrown out that day were lost as quickly as Gabriel's ears had caught them, but there was one thing that the man had said that impacted him like nothing anyone had ever said to him before.

_The second, _The professor had claimed while taking a sip of Orange soda, _is a human creation. Do you think that many other generations experienced seconds or even minutes? Time is just a counting system. _

He knew then that the ticking in the back of his head was no gift from God. Part of him screamed for the ticking to stop, but he knew he needed it. He needed to hear the constant drum of the clock to survive. He was already going to hell, because it was true that he could see numbers in everything. Even if it was created by man, time didn't have flaws. It was clean, perfect, and sterile. Time was heaven as far as Gabriel understood.

Gabriel knew he wasn't supposed to think that. God was present in the Bible, in the Church, and in prayer. He couldn't be seen through science, numbers, or pictures. Still, the part of him that followed the ticking of the clock believed that God must be time. After all, wasn't everything malleable but time? Time held a power over everything else.

When Gabriel had met Chandra Suresh, he thought that maybe he was finally being offered salvation from the torture of his thoughts. God must have sent a messenger to show him that his thoughts weren't ludicrous and that maybe- just maybe- he could be saved as well. When Chandra told him he wasn't special, his heart fell to the floor. God had laughed in his face again and ripped all his hope away again. He refused to believe that there were truly special people, but then he met Brian Davis.

Brian was remarkable. God had given something to Brian that Gabriel could never have, no matter how hard Gabriel wished or worked. But, like with most who are blessed, Brian was unworthy and unappreciative. Even watches from the best watchmakers came broken before they were even sold and it was then that Gabriel knew that he had to correct what God had misplaced. Chandra had told him all about God's mistakes in his book. It was his mission to fix what time had broken.

It had all been too easy. The murder, taking the powers, using what Brian Davis had feared so... He knew then that perhaps he wasn't fixing God's mistakes. He knew then that God was dead. There was no way that any God he knew of would let such filth have such wonderful powers and abilities. No, it came down to zeros, ones, and arrangements nucleotides. It was simply black and white- people had abilities or they didn't, people were worthy or they weren't, and people could either progress or they couldn't.

He now knew that as Gabriel, he could never be special, but if he became something more he could finally be everything his mother claimed he could be.

It had been an experiment at first. He had never thought that there was so much filth on the street, so many more pathetic people that had to be dealt with. He had set Gabriel in the dark, dusty back corner of his mind and let this new side of him roam free. He wasn't Gabriel Gray anymore- he couldn't be. He had moved on and over that pathetic and weak excuse for a human being. Before he had taken on his new life, he couldn't say that he would have even considered himself as a worthy enough individual.

It didn't matter anymore, though. He had improvised and adapted to this new life. Where would the world be without him? It was all thanks to him that the human race would reach a new and higher level of existence. Maybe now he was looked upon as a monster, but most people who pushed on the human race were viewed in a negative light. He knew it was no one's place to hate him for surviving.

Of course, Sylar understood that Gabriel Gray was someone he needed to dispose of, but it was impossible to get rid of him. Whenever he thought he had suppressed that part of himself, something would happen where Sylar couldn't cope and Gabriel was left to fend for himself.

As time ticked away, Sylar became more and more like a God and Gabriel disappeared a little more with every ability. Finally, as the scissors dived through his mother's chest and the light faded out of her eyes, Gabriel died as well. It had been the last thing that Gabriel had wanted to do, but one of the best things that Sylar had ever accomplished. He had killed two birds with one stone and it had been so simple and so beautiful.

He counted the seconds as she fell to the ground and they had been the longest and best four seconds of his life. It was then that he knew for sure that Gabriel could meet his mother in hell while he, Sylar, reigned as God. No one deserved to live that defied him. The pity that Gabriel had possessed for others was just another one of those weak traits that was bred out in animals.

It was natural selection. People were either necessary or they weren't and neither Gabriel Gray nor his mother were necessary in Sylar's eyes. No God could have an Achilles Heel. No, everyone like Gabriel Gray deserved to die. He had been wrong before. He had been weak- tender-hearted and malleable. But now he was cold and calculating like time and time was the only solution to the equation of the universe.

People would be fun to toy with.

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Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! I love reviews- they help me to make stories like this better for readers. So, please r&r!


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